The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: twizzel on April 19, 2013, 12:35:03 pm
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Just out of interest, when you all send lambs off to slaughter, how long is the carcass hung for? I think ours were killed last year on a Tuesday and cut on the Friday morning, so 3 days, and the meat was excellent. I was in the supermarket the other day and found some lamb shoulder joints, with a sticker on with price/weight etc, and the kill and cut dates- which were both the same :-\ so maybe that's half the reason home produced lamb tastes better (along with slower finishing times, good grass etc). What are everyone's thoughts on hanging time- how long are yous all hung for?
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I used to ask for 10 days, though it was mostly shorter. When I did home kill I would go by the temp and weather.
They were Black Welsh Mountain, which is pretty fat free so I would guess breed would make a difference.
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We ask for 7 days for our Heb hogget, but it ends up being 5 - in on Wed, cut on Mon. I think it does make a difference, as well as good rearing practice on grass and a skilled butcher. Heb is usually fat free - I say usually because the last lot were a bit fatty, maybe from all that extra rain so they could have gone off a bit earlier than our usual 14 months.
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Normally a week for ours
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We normally have ours hung for around a week if we can, the abattoir butcher will try and do it sooner than that, however we usually have the abattoir deliver the carcasses to another master butcher and they are really good at advising us on the appropriate length of time to hang the meat, so if it needs a couple of days more than a week then they will advise us. I am not really sure what the criteria are though(!) however I think hogget is better hung for slightly longer?
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7 days for our pure Greyface Dartmoors. I send the ram lambs on by Christmas, then any female rejects I keep until the following spring and send on as hoggets.